Email Update 2

I hope everyone enjoyed their weekends. I know we did. We went all over the small city of Abu Dhabi and learned how to give directions in a taxi (I know what most of you are thinking "why do you need to learn giving directions to a taxi driver?"). Let me explain, there are no addresses here, so we have to use landmarks or big malls to get where you want to go. We have to literally show the taxi driver where he needs to turn to bring us back to the office villa, you have to pay attention or they will keep driving until you tell them to stop and turn around because they missed the turn. It was quite the experience, but today we tried it on our own and made it back in one peice!

On Friday, we were able to visit the villa we will be living in. They tell us it should be done on the 12th, but it really didn't look like they were that far along, so I am not going on their word. If we get the place we want it will be on the bottom floor with an outside kitchen. After seeing both layouts we decided the bottom floor was more open and we could be more creative with decorating it. Even though the kitchen is disconnected from the building it is only three steps out and it is huge! I think I could fit three or four of my kitchens back home inside of it. It will be a great place to entertain family and friends when they visit. We will have two bedrooms inside, the master bedroom will be almost two rooms in one and then there will be a guest room. Also, attached to the kitchen is a maids room. Even though it is small we can still use it as a guest room, so in all we have two guest rooms (plenty of room for you all to come and visit!). We will be sure to send pics when we move in.

Of course we have been taking some other pictures, but have yet to download them onto the computer. As soon as that is completed we will send some out. We also took a mall tour, well actually we visited two malls and drove by one; there are 6 or 7 malls within Abu Dhabi. We just walked around to check it out and since it was the weekend everywhere was packed with people. Everywhere has pretty good a/c though, so it wasn't so bad just walking around. During the day we ate at a Chinese Restaurant, but it was weird because there were no Asians in sight (it was still decent food though).

On Saturday we drove around in the afternoon and visited the vegetable market and fish market. At the end of the day people are just trying to get rid of their food so they were practically throwing food at us, but since we were just checking it out we did not buy anything. I had a hard time walking through the fish market - it's stinky! - but Levi and Kin were fine and enjoyed their leisure walk through it, while I was trying not to gag and heave up my lunch. We ate dinner at an "expensive" restaurant (uh, like, $12 a plate) and enjoyed a partial view of the gulf. It really was an amazing place and it would be a restaurant I would take any tourist especially if you are interested in shishas (or as I call them "hookas").

Today was my first real day of training and I found out I have so much more to learn about the culture and way of life here. As I have said before "everyday is an adventure" and I look forward to having many more.